Do Heroes Make Us Smarter?

When legendary South African President Nelson Mandela passed away in 2013, the world responded with heartache mixed with reverence. President Barack Obama observed that Mandela “no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages.” With this statement, Obama illustrated what we have always done to our greatest heroes—we forge them in eternity.

Why do we idolize great heroic leaders? Obviously, heroes provide us with hope and inspiration. But my research on heroes reveals a surprising finding—they make us smarter, too. Heroes improve our intelligence about the world and teach us lessons about the trajectory of our own lives.

In 2007, Wesley Autrey, a construction worker living in Harlem, received international acclaim when he rescued a complete stranger from an oncoming New York subway train. Autrey witnessed the man fall on the subway tracks just as a train was approaching. Realizing he had no time to move the man from the tracks, Autrey made the remarkable decision to lie down on top of him in-between the rails as the train passed over them both. Only one-half inch separated Autrey from severe injury or death.

After performing this heroic act, Autrey received hundreds of letters from people thanking him for showing them how to live their lives and how to respond in emergency situations. Autrey and other selfless heroes like him teach us what to do, and the right thing to do, in challenging situations. Heroes like Autrey provide a script for heroic action to a world hungry for such a script.

2. Hero stories illuminate paradoxical life truths

Spiritual guru Richard Rohr argues that hero stories are saturated with complex life truths that are nearly impossible for humans to grasp unless they are illustrated inside a good hero story. Many of these truths are paradoxical secrets of human growth and development. For example, in a typical hero story, the hero cannot grow as a person until after he or she has experienced a significant falling or failing. “Where you stumble,” wrote comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, “there lies your treasure.”

Other paradoxical truths in hero stories include the wisdom that (a) we must leave home to find home; (b) we must lose ourselves in order to find ourselves; (c) we must surrender to win; and (d) we must give up something important to gain something important.

3. Heroes teach us that their journey is the human journey

Joseph Campbell believed that the hero journey parallels human developmental stages. All young adults are driven out of their safe, familiar worlds and into the fearful real world. Psychologist Eric Erikson’s stages of human lifespan development suggest a hero trajectory during our lives, with young adults driven to establish competencies and carve out an identity for themselves.

Older adults reach a stage of generativity, which Erikson defines as people’s desire to create things that will outlast them and to give back to the society that has given them so much. Hero stories teach us that we are all developmentally equipped to pursue a lifelong hero-like journey.

Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim believed that children’s fairy tales are useful in helping people, especially children, understand emotional experience. The heroes of these fairly tales are usually subjected to dark, foreboding experiences, such as encounters with witches, evil spells, abandonment, neglect, abuse, and death. Listeners to these tales develop strategies for resolving their fears and distress.

Bettelheim believed that even the most distressing fairy tales, such as those by the Brothers Grimm, add clarity to confusing emotions and give people a greater sense of life’s meaning and purpose. The darkness of fairy tales allows children to grow emotionally, thus developing their emotional intelligence and preparing them for the challenges of adulthood.

Conclusion

Heroes give us far more than inspiration—they are our greatest teachers. Heroes show us the secrets to unlocking our fullest potential as human beings. They do so by role-modeling virtue, by clarifying complex and paradoxical life truths, by equipping us with emotional intelligence, and by revealing how their journey can be our journey, too. No wonder Obama said that Nelson Mandela “belongs to the ages.” The wisdom we get from our heroes has a timeless quality that helps us thrive as human beings.

I think you're generalizing too much about "heroism." For starters, there tends to be very important differences between fictional heroes and non-fictional (or, "real") heroes.

Fictional heroes tend to oppose villains, and that encourages dichotomous thinking. With this in mind, there is a tendency to project heroic and villainous traits to people in the real world and that's often not very realistic. In the real world, (as is the case with some stories), a hero tends to be someone else's villain, and a villain tends to be someone else's hero. Does that mean that villains also make us smarter? With all the raves that heroes receive, should we also be paying attention to villains? Perhaps villains can also teach us something about ourselves?

Real-life heroes tend to be much more flawed than the typical, popular fictional hero. For one thing, the typical real-life hero that occasionally makes a news appearance is more like an average person, but sensationalized by the media to be something much greater: a real life manifestation of a fictional hero who should be unquestioningly idolized for their heroism. Problems arise when some of these real life "heroes" subsequently perform apparently "villainous" acts. It really messes with people's concept of a "hero" because in their desperate attempt to prop up a real person as the "ideal" hero (as shown in fiction), reality intervenes leading to disappointment.

This isn't to say that there's nothing to learn from heroism. It's just that there's a danger to idolizing heroes too much.

Kenii, you make some good points. In fact, you may have inspired me to post an essay on what villainy teaches us. Certainly, villains show us what not to do, or they offer a sort of cautionary tale about what can happen when pride, values, genes, or social forces go awry. I'll have to give this some thought. Many thanks for your thoughtful comment.

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